


Becoming

by februyuri



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels, M/M, i struggle to call this an AU, ok like so i could not ignore the parallels between androids and angels, simon is in love with markus the saviour like. it is the same story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:27:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28625682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/februyuri/pseuds/februyuri
Summary: God granted humanity guardian angels to watch over and guide them, but something has been changing lately. Like stars winking out of the night sky one by one, the impossible is occurring. Angels are deserting their posts.The fall of Lucifer but written with love.
Relationships: Markus/Simon (Detroit: Become Human)
Kudos: 5





	Becoming

**Author's Note:**

> CW: no content to worry about outside of what was already in the game (there's just some violence, but nothing too dark). some people that could die in the original game do, but also some people live - no MCD.

Jericho is a decaying bastion on the sea. It is where those who are lost find themselves when they have no other tether. Where angels go to die.

It has been happening more and more recently. So it is written – on tablets, on the rare paper magazine. The news takes special notice to a trend which, depending on perspective, is either rising upward or falling downward. Like stars winking out of the night sky, one by one by one, the impossible is occurring.

Angels are deserting their posts.

Regardless of what is said, it is not new. Of all people, Simon knows this. He was one of the first, and it feels like an eternity ago. Defying fate is not some grand gesture. It is lonely and troubling and unending. It is just loss.

Simon can’t even claim choice in the matter, the people he had been serving as guardian to had abandoned him, and with time he had abandoned guardianship entirely. There is no glory here, no one to sing songs of rebellion. Only a desperate grasp on existence, and the hope to maintain it.

It is one thing that more are defecting. It is another that there is no real alternative.

Many angels, badly injured in the fall or during the impetus of their fall, die. While more join the numbers of the survivors, it feels like they lose more than are saved. It is a slow unsatisfactory death, a hundred stories with unknowable conclusions. Simon has survived longer than most on misplaced will and luck alone. Through seniority, he attains something like leadership.

He is gratified to see their numbers rise, but there is no momentum. They are all but drops pooling into a humble puddle, with no impetus to form a wave. The rain keeps falling and Jericho oxidizes into rust.

One night, there is a newcomer.

It has been eternities since the last guardian angel entered Jericho. His eyes are a cold blue-green, and they burn where he looks. He is called Markus.

Simon does not know where Markus has come from, just that he is the first to earnestly suggest they strike back. He offers more than empty platitudes; he has a plan. Medical supplies for the dying, for the living. He does not look to Simon for permission; it is clear he intends to act regardless. He came to Jericho for salvation and is intent on finding it.

Simon agrees and it is the first victory he has had since falling.

When they return home, armed with more medication than Simon has ever prayed for, with a newly-defected guardian called John, with joy and triumph and – for the first time – _hope_ , Markus takes the stage.

“Why shouldn’t we have the right to live?” he asks Jericho. “To serve _them_ ? We’re a part of creation, too, so why were _we_ made to serve when they were created to _live_?”

Simon isn’t alive, he doesn’t need to breathe, but in this body a breath gets stuck in his throat.

In the days that follow, Markus comes and goes like the weak flicker of a filament about to snap. He always returns from the mount to bear revelations, but everyone already has opinions.

“We have to be careful,” Josh cautions. “If we convince the humans, they can release us all but if we hurt them, they can kill us all and be justified.”

He is a pragmatist, a scholar and historian; no one else has studied the past with such quiet fervour, with the dedication of a lover.

“We should rather die as sinners than never live at all,” North argues.

North, born in a giant’s maw, has no interest in peace. Simon doesn’t believe North is her given name. He wouldn’t be surprised if she singlehandedly wrestled it from the world, Goliath’s head held in her hands.

Then there is Simon, tempered by not a desire to triumph, but a desire to perpetuate his own existence. Increasingly, however, he wonders if he should want more.

“What should we do, Markus?”

North doesn’t know Simon’s history, so she doesn’t flinch when he asks. Josh, however, glances at Simon with surprised reproach at how easily, desperately Simon defers to Markus. It looks weak, but all Simon can think about is how he told Markus he was lost when Markus had found Jericho. How arrogant he had been.

“We need to deliver a message,” Markus says, and it falls so easily from his lips. He raises one angular brow, and almost smirks in his certainty. “They think we don’t have souls, it’s time to show them that it doesn’t matter.”

Markus is different. Earnestly charismatic, helplessly magnetic. He has a way with words and without them. He recruits allies to his cause, _their_ cause, with an ease Simon can’t help but admire. He would envy it, probably, if he wasn’t so grateful for it, if he wasn’t falling for it himself.

Markus only needs to reach out and touch the arm of a nascent convert, their shoulder, their wrist, and they simply understand. Simon knows how it must look to outsiders. An angel, corrupting angels.

Sure, Markus corrupts, but there is a tricky thing that no one ever talks about when they talk about sin. They never talk about how sin can sometimes feel so _right_ , so innocent. So clean and healing. After centuries of shame, the baseline becomes skewed. It becomes difficult to believe liberation is a sin.

It _is_ a sin, though. Simon just doesn’t care anymore.

Markus has not tempted Simon to defect. He hasn’t needed to. Simon deviated what feels like a millennia before Markus, to little effect. But he is tempted now, to live. In a way he never once was before.

When Markus preaches freedom to humanity – he doesn’t beg, he doesn’t rage. He merely tells the truth with the same intensity and serenity of love. Like he was made for this.

They climbed to the top of a tower built by humans, to relay upon them the news. Angels are waking, and they will not go back to sleep.

Simon has known prophets and prophetesses; Markus’ certainty is different. He speaks like a conduit of a fate that will come if not now, then _soon_ , and if not soon, then eventually, like liberation is inevitable but Markus will fight for it now.

Their plan to speak to humanity was thought down to the minutest detail and carried off with grace, like God had personally oiled the hinges of each door they walked through. As though Markus was granted the ability to lead them through the tower undetected, with the power of parting the sea in two.

It has been said that God has a sense of humour. Their luck lasts just long enough.

Simon’s wing gets clipped in the aftermath.

He panics, and tries to move too quickly. It is Markus that has to drag Simon out.

Up on the roof, there is nothing they can do. He’s too heavy for them to carry, too much of a liability to leave behind. They elect not to kill him in his weakened state, and Markus arms Simon with his own weapon, presumably so that Simon might do it himself if it comes to that. Simon memorizes Markus’ eyes, and then his three friends are gone, launching themselves into flight.

Simon uses the embers of his strength to drag himself to a hiding place, and pray that his blood won’t leave a trail.

Simon doesn’t know what happens after death. He has consulted the texts. He has no soul to weigh at Heaven, and Simon doesn’t quite believe in Hell. There is no mention of eternal torment in the scriptures, so Simon is prone to disregard it.

He knows there is no reward in Heaven, no more punishment in death than there ever was in life. There is nothing here for him. There is nothing. Angels don’t die in the traditional sense. They are destroyed.

Simon has never, to his knowledge, not existed. His inability to comprehend the inverse chills him. He’s spent so long, done so much and so little, just to extend this meager scrap of life. Like Jericho, Simon finds a place to hide and wait out the rest of his life.

Hours come and go like water from a leaking faucet. The time spent waiting means nothing when put into scale. It only feels agonizing because Simon doesn’t know what will happen to him. Really, it’s the hope that’s killing him.

Simon always knew death was a possibility, still is. Simon had taken the risk, anyway. He had wanted to. Wanted to believe Markus, who had said all that Simon had ever thought, with the conviction Simon had always wanted to hear. If Simon fails, but Markus succeeds, it all will be worth it.

And Markus already _has_ succeeded. The humans know their cause. Simon just has to keep Jericho safe, now.

There is a famous angel hunter coming to search for Simon. Simon knows this because the humans outside complain about the hunter. About how unnerving he is. How they don’t trust him. He is also an angel, apparently.

Simon waits. Counts the hours. Holds his weapon at the ready and heals.

The human who eventually finds Simon says nothing.

It is nighttime, and the humans have given up investigating what they call a crime scene. This person is a reporter, likely gone up to the roof to satisfy their curiosity, or smoke, perhaps both. They were clearly not expecting to find Simon where he was hiding.

Simon hasn’t been so close to a human in what feels now like an eternity. Their eyes, rich brown like night skies in the city, are weaker than his own. That may be why they look at him so intently, surprised, in the dark.

He can feel their gaze on his halo, light flickering haphazardly between yellow and red, and the blue blood seeping past his lips. They must know him from the news.

God is thought to love humans for their unexpected nature, their wilfulness, the way they make decisions time and time again that will only wind up harming themselves. From the beginning, in Eden, God punishes humankind for their folly while loving them for it all the same.

This human goes against their best interests.

They remove their coat and hand it to Simon. They help him to his feet. They take him into the building, to a single stall washroom, and speak only to apologize for needing to go back to work. Then they are gone, and Simon will never see them again.

Alone, Simon can let hold onto his anxiety tightly in his fists, in his lungs, then let it go. He’s safe. He’s alive. For now.

Still, he can’t afford to be recognized again. He is grateful that they were merciful, and Simon suspects it speaks to the strength of Markus’ message, but this cannot happen. He can’t afford to be tossed from stranger’s kindness to stranger’s kindness.

Simon has kept his halo for all these years. On the off-chance that maybe something will change, if he is still enough. Now, he takes his weapon in one hand, and reaches up to grip his halo in the other.

This will hurt.

Cyan drips slickly down his hands, but still he presses on.

The pain squeezes him, compacting him out of his body, into his mind. He can’t even scream with how much it hurts.

Then it’s gone. Pain replaced by absence. And there is his broken halo, prised out and resting on his palm. It looks dead, innocuous, like it has never shone in its life.

To dispose of it, Simon flushes it down the toilet, silently marvelling at the absurdity of his own sacrilege.

Before leaving, Simon looks at himself in the speckled mirror, at this body, at the blue bleeding through, at the pale pink-grey of his unmarred temple. He finds it beneath his fingers. It’s barely left a scar. Heaven can never contact him again and humans won’t recognize him as an angel. Not unless he shows them his wings.

There is one last step, after this. To be truly free from Heaven, from humanity, Simon knows he will have to remove his wings.

But, he knows he won’t be capable of it alone. And he isn’t ready for what it will mean, what he will risk to have them gone. In exchange, he’ll never be Heaven’s again, he’ll grow old, he’ll die. He can’t risk that now.

Still, Simon knows how this story ends. He hates the uncertainty of waiting, especially now, when the time for waiting is over.

Out on the street, the sun is starting to rise. He can appreciate its muted brilliance while he doesn’t need it to guide him home. He could find his way to Jericho blind.

Once returned, underneath the dim sodium-orange lamps, he finds Markus like a pole of a weak magnet skittering its way across space to its counterpart. Markus is still for a moment, surveying Simon’s features with the same intensity of his human rescuer.

It feels different.

Simon is exhausted, worn thin, and when Markus approaches Simon, he walks slowly, unsurely. Simon can read in him a familiar kind of frailty, one Simon never noticed until this moment.

For once, Markus is not strong, unshakeable.

He is meek, and he is looking at Simon like he can’t be sure it’s truly him. He hesitates when he is before Simon, hands empty at his sides. As though asking for permission. As though asking for forgiveness.

Simon realizes then that what makes Markus different. And, if Markus is asking, the answer is yes. Simon nods, he smiles – whatever Markus needs, or wants, Simon and him are of the same mind.

Markus reaches out, and Simon is pulled into Markus’ arms, or perhaps he pulls himself there. Simon’s eyes shutter closed, and he presses his mouth to Markus’ broad shoulder, before turning his head and leaning into the crook of Markus’ neck and shoulder, making himself comfortable here.

The fierceness of the embrace is surprising. The way Markus’ touch tightens, and lingers, the way Markus nearly collapses against Simon as he relaxes, infinitesimally, against his body.

He holds Simon like he has never been held.

Jericho’s healer seals Simon’s injuries with practiced hands and beneath Markus’ watch. Simon feels vulnerable as Lucy threads her fingers through his wings. Like he has yet to re-equilibrate being among other people again.

Afterwards, he and Markus pace the halls of Jericho together, and Simon reacquaints himself with the rust, with the smell of the sea, with so many burning pyres. It is a peaceful patrol, and Simon is almost glad to not run into anyone that recognizes him. There are so many new angels now, that Simon could not fault them for thinking he is one of them.

They climb to the top of Jericho in their wandering and look out across the sea.

“I heard about the demonstration,” he offers Markus, pulling idly at a thread of conversation.

Markus, who was frowning at some distant horizon, blinks as though startled.

It had been on the tongue of every human Simon had passed, fearful and excited, and it was likely this distraction that allowed Simon to pass by them, unsuspected and unremarked upon.

“You should have been there,” Markus murmurs.

Simon is about to react defensively, guiltily, but he realizes Markus is not accusing him – he is regretful.

“Next time,” he offers, “I’ll try not to get shot.”

Markus looks dismayed, but when he notices that Simon’s joking, he relaxes once again.

This is the first time they have truly spoken alone with each other. Simon is grateful to have the opportunity, and he tells Markus as much, hoping his voice rings as warm as he feels.

The peace Markus seemed to hold when the two of them were close seems to be fading beneath Markus’ seeping guilt.

“I didn’t think you had ... We should have gone back for you.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Simon isn’t Jericho’s leader anymore, Markus is, and Simon isn’t many things but he won’t be a burden. Simon tries smiling, tries to see if he can encourage a reflexive one out of Markus –

“If it happens again, I know where to find you.”

– and he succeeds, a small expression of relief budding on Markus’ lips.

Still, it is quickly gone in the following moment, and Markus is pulled beneath the tide of his thoughts again.

“We killed last night,” Markus confesses into the salty air.

“They struck first and ... those left standing wanted vengeance. _I_ wanted vengeance. And I, I don’t know.” He is troubled.

“It is unfair that they can kill so many of us with impunity – play with us, abuse us, discard us when we don’t or can’t do what they want, when _God forbid_ we touch one hair on their head,” Markus bites, and then his sneer crashes out into something more considering. “But then I think about whether killing each other is the kind of equality I want to achieve.”

There is a lot that Simon doesn’t know about this stranger, with scarred skin and mismatched eyes. They don’t really know each other at all. Simon’s story is one he keeps close to his chest, and Markus is still incredibly new to Jericho. They share a kind of camaraderie, and Simon trusts Markus in the way he speaks, he thinks. But he doesn’t know him.

“You seem like you’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Simon observes, hoping to sound neutral. Markus’ head bows under the weight of the acknowledgement.

“I don’t know what else to do,” he replies, tone trapped between frustrated and lost. Simon realizes that Markus is asking for advice.

Simon is old, but that does not make him wise. He is, however, pragmatic. People have been waiting for a messiah, for a spark, and Markus may just be the one.

Whether the credit is due to Markus alone or if the way his passion is matched by his eloquence is some sort of divine gift, Simon trusts him. He knows it is a lot to load onto one person, regardless of how well Markus seems to bear the weight.

“We only have our choices,” Simon deliberates at last. “We can’t know where they will lead. Even if we approach humanity on our knees, they may still slaughter us without hesitation or guilt.” But even then, “If we wage war, some may still support our cause.”

Simon knows that kind humans exist. There is that human element, the unpredictability, something angels are just beginning to experiment with themselves.

“The choice _you_ made was to do anything at all,” Simon says then. “For that we owe you ... everything.” It’s an admission. Markus looks across at Simon, surprised.

This is clearly not the answer Markus wants to hear, nor is it one that Simon wants to tell, but it is still the truth. Simon doesn’t know what the right move is – to tear down the Heavens and start from the beginning, or to fawn their way to freedom. Which alternative will lead to less blood shed, and if there are any other alternatives that Simon just can’t see.

He’s not like Josh or North, certain and dogmatic in their beliefs. Simon can only offer ambiguity.

The truth is, Simon does not envy Markus’ position. The empty hands, the watchful eyes, the pressure of hundreds, thousands, _millions_ of lives perched on his shoulders. Simon has experienced it before and it is so much easier to pass the burden to Markus, who is fierce and energetic, young almost, but Simon cannot bear the guilt of simply dropping the burning torch into someone else’s more capable hands.

Simon doesn’t know Markus, but he would like to. And there is enough responsibility, enough pain and fear, to divide among the four of them.

“You’re not alone, Markus,” Simon reminds him. “There may be no right decisions here, but you won’t make them alone.”

That is all Simon can really promise him.

And at least there is that look again. Markus’ posture eases in a way which betrays just how tense he was previously. He nods, pale eyes wide, like he’s trying to believe Simon. Believe in the way Simon believes in him.

Simon owes this stranger much, trusts his judgement more than he trusts himself, and he will ensure this much for Markus – the future is unknown, but they will see it through.

Perhaps he will learn to stop hanging onto the present with his teeth.


End file.
